The invention of superglue is one of those tales that come as a surprise, much like the invention of the substance itself. In the 1930s and 40s plastic and its uses were seen as a technological wonder. It was just another brilliant part of the modern world that was going to change the world and make it a better place. So much could be made with it. However, the advent of the Second world war meant that the use of plastics was taken in a less positive direction. The need to develop armaments quickly was what was required and fast. It was whilst trying new uses for plastic that the glue we now use for Metal bonding adhesives, such as those from ct1.com/product-applications/metal-to-metal-adhesive, was discovered.
It was whilst trying to make plastic removable and interchangeable gun sights for snipers and general infantry men that the glue was found. All the attempts to make a gunsight had failed and the only thing that the inventors had was a sticky mess.
Feeling they had failed one of them Harry Wesley Coover Jnr saw a different potential for what they had made. Using the substance he saw that it bonded substances, and set rock hard, that usually would have had to have been riveted or welded together. The potential for the formula was not lost and Coover Jr and a colleague, aptly named Fred Joyner, began to market the glue as something that could bond everything.
Joining metal before and after cyanoacrylate
Before superglue, joining metal was awkward. From around the 1920s, designers, architects and manufacturers wanted to bond materials that existing methods could not handle well. Metal pieces were either overlapped and riveted, which tended to encourage rust, or welded, which left joins too unsightly for decorative work.
The answer was cyanoacrylate, and like many inventions it was found by accident. In 1942 Harry Coover was trying to develop a clear plastic gunsight for the US military when he produced a substance that stuck to everything it touched. It was no use for gunsights, so it was set aside and forgotten.
Years later its potential was recognised, and it was marketed as a super bonder that could stick almost anything. Remarkably, the formula used today is essentially the same as the one first stumbled upon, while specialist metal bonding adhesives have since developed much further.